Andrew White of Gartner recently posed a question about whether master data management (MDM) is dead. He didn’t actually suggest that the demise of master data management is imminent. He was challenging whether our current terminology adequately clarifies the current reality about MDM and associated product areas.
Certainly the terms describing many markets and types of products are being associated with MDM. Jackie Roberts of DATAForge pointed out that the definition of MDM now seems to include “data integrity, data quality, entity resolution, matching, data integration, governance, metrics and analysis.”
While entity resolution was mentioned in her list, our obsessive focus on entity resolution (aka identity resolution) leads to the conclusion that, rather than being subsumed, its role is growing. Wayne Eckerson at TDWI seems to agree that identity resolution is a critical component of the recent MDM acquisitions. In his post about the acquisitions by Informatica and IBM of Siperian and Initiate Systems, respectively, he described the two transactions this way:
“You could say that Siperian is mostly MDM, but with identity resolution and other capabilities, whereas Initiate is mostly about identity resolution, but with MDM and other capabilities.”
Identity resolution is becoming an integral part of many product areas. Within MDM itself, creating a single-entity view is best done with an identity resolution engine. Data mining is greatly enhanced by the addition of entity resolution. Dan Power of Hub Solution Designs wrote about how key identity resolution is to data matching. We’ve talked about how social CRM can resolve identities of individuals across multiple disparate data sources using identity resolution, as well as “rationalize multiple variations and errors and anomalies that block finding existing customers within their systems”.
Although identity resolution technology has been years in the making, it has only recently risen into the consciousness of most analysts and customers. Because of its ability to bring enhanced clarity to ambiguous data, advanced identity resolution is now beginning to have a significant impact across many data-centered disciplines.
“The Dallas police has a high tech fusion center that monitors potential threats in Dallas. They helped foil the plot when a man was planning on blowing up the Bank of America building… Four years ago, Dallas Police put alert on Kimberly Al-Homsi because she was scouting runways at Love Field. On Saturday, she was arrested allegedly with pipe bombs in her car.”
“When a recruiter and/or a hiring manager finds someone for a job position it is basically done by getting in a number of candidates and then choose the best fit among them. This of course don’t make up for, that there may be someone better fit among all those people that were not among the candidates. We have the same problem in data matching when we are deduplicating, consolidating or matching for other purposes.”
“Proposals in Obama’s new proposal with a strong I.T. flavor include… Adopt real-time analysis of claims and payments data to identify waste, fraud and abuse in public health programs… Establish a CMS/IRS data-matching program to match information on entities that have evaded filing taxes against provider billing data to better detect fraudulent providers.”
“MDM now creates another competitive front for Informatica against rivals and complicates some partial relationships - notably Oracle, which includes Informatica’s identity resolution software as part of its Siebel Universal Customer Master (UCM) MDM engine, as well as some parts of its data quality software. Informatica also has OEM relationships with IBM and DataFlux for address cleansing that might need revisiting.”
“Being acquired by a large player such as IBM also raises the question of whether Initiate will be able to unfold its potential under the large IBM umbrella, or whether it will wither and sink into oblivion alongside the multitude of applications in IBM’s broad portfolio. This will be a test of how well IBM integrates small but high-performing companies.”
“Electronic health records, or ‘EHRs,’ are the future of medical record keeping. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or “ARRA,” includes incentive payments for hospitals that adopt an EHR, but the timetable for implementation is tight. To qualify for the full payment, hospitals will require proving ‘meaningful use’ by October 2012.”
“Workers’ comp fraud indicators… Frequent additions and cancellations of coverage, especially if several business entities appear to be owned or controlled by the same person or group”
“IBM announced today that it plans to buy MDM vendor Initiate Systems. As hypothesized here in this blog last week, the move was not entirely unexpected, but on the heels of last week’s announcement by Informatica to purchase Siperian, it certainly creates yet another wave in the marketplace. More moves are certain to take place as competing companies align – and realign – their Single Entity View (SEV) strategies. The key to this realignment will be for current industry players to maximize their functionality beyond ‘playing with matches’. That dated view of fuzzy matching is no longer enough. Not for the large data quality vendors. Certainly not for the customer.”
“Noting that Initiate’s product is spefically designed to handle only certain types of data—customer data and product data—Kalido CEO Hewitt says, ‘Where they have struggled is in mastering multiple domains, even though they advertise their products as such. The problem is that as you add domains, the complexity of the data relationships expands exponentially. So one domain might have 100 relationships, two domains 300 relationships, 10 domains 3,000 relationships. So when one master data element changes, hundreds of relationships could change, which requires a governance process to manage it.’”
“Watson called up a contact at the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), a fusion center that combines intelligence from federal law enforcement and state and military sources. Watson also called a friend at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and asked him to prepare a ’serious incident report.’ ICE mobilized an officer specializing in human trafficking within minutes, Watson said.”
“But the general upheaval in MDM aside, the IBM deal is interesting in another way. IBM has downplayed this as an MDM acquisition, positioning it more as buying into two verticals, health care and a government. Gartner’s Andrew White writes that at one point during the briefing, IBM was asked what the Initiate acquisition meant for MDM. IBM responded it reflects a ‘verticalization of MDM.’ White writes that’s good news for health care customers, but ‘troubling for IBM MDM product strategy.’”
IBM announced today that it plans to buy MDM vendor Initiate Systems. As hypothesized here in this blog last week, the move was not entirely unexpected, but on the heels of last week’s announcement by Informatica to purchase Siperian, it certainly creates yet another wave in the marketplace. More moves are certain to take place as competing companies align – and realign – their Single Entity View (SEV) strategies. The key to this realignment will be for current industry players to maximize their functionality beyond “playing with matches”. That dated view of fuzzy matching is no longer enough. Not for the large data quality vendors. Certainly not for the customer.
The question of when companies like Oracle, SAP and Microsoft react – and how – will keep the blogosphere humming for awhile.
From the perspective of identity resolution – technologies that go well beyond simple matching - the IBM announcement creates a very interesting scenario. Let’s be honest… there are three organizations have been truly positioned as leaders in providing SEV functionality that helps organizations expose fuzzy matches and non-obvious relationships across data sources. IBM and Initiate are two; Infoglide Software Corporation is the third. IBM’s Identity Insight (formerly EAS), Initiate’s entity resolution, and Infoglide’s Identity Resolution Engine (IRE) all deliver the promise of SEV or “who’s who… and who knows whom” technology, and all three answer considerably more than “yes it’s a match” or “no it’s not a match”.
In the case of Initiate Systems, the entity resolution product is new, and frankly came about as a basic repackaging of their successful MDM product for the Healthcare market. IBM’s product, like Infoglide’s, was built from the ground up as an identity resolution engine by Jeff Jonas and the old SRD organization. Now, with today’s announcement, IBM seems to have created some painful duplicity in their offerings. It occurs to me that IBM has not become a global technology leader by mismanaging its products and messaging, so something’s gotta give! Which product goes away, and when, will be interesting to see.
Either way, there are now effectively two players left standing in the SEV market – IBM and Infoglide.
Much is happening these days in the Data Quality space. Customers are embracing MDM strategies at a record pace, M&A activity has picked up from an industry perspective, and the various players in the data quality marketplace are expanding their offerings like never before. It matters little if the objective is to vet fraud or to master data. The race to deliver the dream of an enterprise-wide single-entity-view (SEV) is on. Gentlemen (and Danica Patrick)… start your engines!
The key word here, naturally, is ‘engines’. An engine moves things forward, and performs considerably more than one basic task. As has been well-documented here at IdentityResolutionDaily, a true identity resolution engine plays a vital part of any SEV initiative. Technologies that can look at data across disparate silos and return results that point to both matches AND non-obvious relationships are in high demand… and set to grow even further in 2010. The simplicity of “yes it’s a match” or “no, it’s not a match” is no longer sufficient for most organizations as they seek the single-entity-view. Remember, an entity is not merely made up of attributes… but also relationships. A true ‘engine’ points to those relationships, and moves the entire data quality initiative forward.
An engine cares little what the car looks like, and ought to drive a multitude of vehicles. Similarly, an identity resolution engine ought to be built to solve a multitude of problems. SEV for exposing risk and fraud, SEV for Healthcare Patient Matching, SEV for Law Enforcement, SEV for customer relationship management, SEV for data disambiguation, SEV for house-holding, and so on and so on. The engine should perform the same functions… while only the domain (or body type) changes.
It also occurs to us that the engine ought to be flexible in terms of what is mounted to the chassis – and how. Do you want the 2.2L engine? 4 cylinder or 6 cylinder? In the case of an identity resolution engine, customers ought to be able to pick how the functionality is delivered. Full enterprise software license with professional services to build the car? Done. Functionality on demand a la Infoglide Software’s Identity Resolution as a Service (IRaaSTM) offering? You got it. A SEV appliance that sits behind a customer’s firewall to alleviate privacy-in-data concerns? No problem.
The need for an SEV engine that provides a powerful library of matching and relationship capabilities, delivered in a variety of customer-friendly methods is now more critical than ever. With the increase in activity lately around the MDM space, one thing is clear: the race is most definitely on.
I read with interest yesterday’s article at SeekingAlpha which discusses rumors swirling around the MDM software industry. According to the article, sources suggest that two deals are very near completion. The first of those rumored transactions would see Informatica picking up MDM provider Siperian. On the heels of their acquisitions of Identity Systems and AddressDoctor, the Siperian purchase could not be totally unexpected – but would most certainly create some ripple effect worth watching.
The first thing that springs to mind is what Oracle would intend to do with Informatica. A long-time business partner of Oracle, strengthened through the 2008 purchase of Identity Systems, Informatica could now only be classified as a true and direct competitor to Oracle. Can Oracle continue to OEM technology (SSA Name3, for example) from what would instantly become a major competitor? Sleeping with the enemy is one thing… leaving money on the nightstand afterwards is another thing altogether! It will be interesting to see what happens here, to say the least.
The other rumored acquisition is that of Initiate Systems by IBM. Thought to be roughly twice the size of Siperian, Initiate would tend to give further credibility to IBM’s vast – and growing – presence in the Health Care industry, where Initiate has become a recognized industry leader. What muddies the waters, however, would be the question of what IBM would intend to do with Initiate’s entity resolution engine. In a nutshell, Initiate has been one of two software vendors doing an excellent job of providing technologies applicable for both MDM and fraud/risk related implementations. Infoglide Software Corporation is the other.
Marketed in an eerily similar fashion to Infoglide’s earlier-released Identity Resolution Engine (is imitation the most sincere form of flattery?), Initiate’s offering in this identity resolution space could become short-lived given IBM’s large and ongoing investment in InfoSphere Identity Insight Solutions (formerly Entity Analytics Solutions). How soon that would happen, of course, is anyone’s guess.
One thing is certain, however: the need for technology that is applicable to both MDM initiatives and that exposes risk and fraud through matching and linking of entities is very real and growing. How the other major industry players react – should either or both of these rumors become reality – will define the industry for years to come.
By Robert Barker, Infoglide Senior VP & Chief Marketing Officer
Confusion about medical records can lead to chaos. We’ve all heard horror stories about hospital tragedies caused by misidentification of a patient, such as applying an unnecessary surgery. It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of correct, unambiguous information in the practice of medicine. Knowing as much as possible about a patient enables a practitioner to reach a correct diagnosis and the proper treatment regimen in the least amount of time.
Underscoring the importance that accurate information plays in effective treatment, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) passed in 2009 includes incentives for hospitals and doctors to adopt and support certified electronic health record (EHR) technology. In fact, the Act set aside $20 billion to encourage health care organizations to improve their recordkeeping through healthcare information technology.
Today’s hot healthcare industry topic, therefore, is electronic health records. While an EHR can create the potential for interoperability, it can’t deliver interoperability without robust identity resolution. High-quality health care depends on complete, unambiguous patient information being available at all times, so identity resolution technology has become a crucial component of a well-designed healthcare identification infrastructure.
By applying identity resolution to patient identification integrity, identity resolution can prevent common medical errors:
Duplicates are a simple example, where the two records exist for the same person within a single facility. More complex types of errors can easily start to mount up, including overlaps where more than one record exists for one person within two facilities within a single organization, and overlays where information for two people are integrated under a single record.
The rush to respond to ARRA resulted in overstatements of the identity resolution capabilities of many products. For example, most master data management (MDM) systems include matching and de-duplication capabilities that have become labeled “identity resolution” while in fact they lack the critical requirements for identity resolution. Dan Power of Hub Solution Designs has pointed out the growing role of identity resolution in MDM and the need for MDM vendors to move beyond “not invented here” thinking to incorporate true identity resolution into their offerings.
Confusion about medical records can lead to chaos. Clearing up confusion about identity resolution clears a path out of the chaos that will lead to better solutions.
“From a business standpoint, entity resolution (ER) is really the first step of a two-part process of integrating information about entities. Entity reference records usually carry two types of attributes describing the entity, identifying attributes and informational attributes. Although the line between the two can be fuzzy, identifying attributes are those that describe the entity’s ‘characteristics,’ information that tends to persist over time and helps to distinguish one entity from another of the same type.”
“According to the latest statistics from HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society), only 0.5% of U.S. hospitals currently have a complete EMR (electronic medical record) system that provides data continuity throughout the institution. Hospitals and healthcare systems will install, integrate, and enhance EMR systems at an accelerated pace in an effort to demonstrate ‘meaningful use’ and capitalize on ARRA incentives.”
“Pulling those data streams together–from federal agencies, law enforcement, foreign governments, and private sector companies–and getting that information to the right people quickly and in useable format are huge technical challenges. While there were obvious missed opportunities in the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, including failure to take action with information in hand, it would be a mistake to underestimate the end-to-end data integration effort required as one of, simply, ‘connecting the dots.’”
“Cloud computing will take such a stranglehold on the market as companies try to reduce hardware spending that Gartner has made the bold proclamation that one-fifth of all businesses will own absolutely no IT assets come 2012.”
“While SHARE is strictly for communications between law enforcement and the state’s Fusion Center, a companion portal, called the Portal to Uphold a Secure Homeland (PUSH), was also developed as part of the USDHS ITEP project to support private sector security personnel who oversee critical infrastructure.”
“You may not be aware of this, but medical-related fraud and identity theft are growing problems in America. With the exploding cost of healthcare, increasing bureaucratic administrative healthcare systems, and a large, aging Baby Boomer population requiring increased medical care, it would seem that we are entering into a kind of ‘perfect storm’ for medical fraud.”
“NBTA has long supported risk-management programs that enhance aviation security. TSA’s Secure Flight helps to enhance domestic and international travel through the use of improved watch list matching, while the US-VISIT program collects biometric information from international travelers, both of which help to protect travelers and our nation. These programs should be used as readily available tools to improve the system that protects our global aviation security.”
“Should anyone need a demonstration of the difficulties that delay reaching global agreements, consider that the term “EHR” has an idiosyncratic definition in the U.S. when compared to most of the world. In the U.S. the term refers to the record of patient information that is kept by an individual care delivery organization (CDO), with the proviso that there be some degree of interoperability. In most other countries that use the term it refers to some specific sharing of information that may be sourced from many places including but not limited to the electronic patient records of individual CDOs.”
Infoglide Software provides entity resolution and analysis solutions for retail, banking, insurance, government, and law enforcement. Without the need for data cleansing or warehousing, Infoglide Software's Identity Resolution Engine™ (IRE) analyzes all of the information relating to individuals and/or entities from multiple sources of data and then applies...
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